


The Other Half of You

by the_write_day



Category: Scream (Movies)
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, During Canon, Gen, Mentions other characters, One Shot, but not a very good one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 04:37:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16527506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_write_day/pseuds/the_write_day
Summary: Roman's final thoughts as he lays dying.(Occurs at the climax of "Scream 3.")





	The Other Half of You

_You. This is all because of you._

The words echo hollowly through Roman’s head as the ice pick punches through his bulletproof vest, a powerful stab down down down until the handle presses flush to his chest. This doesn’t hurt, not like the two wounds in his back, which still throb hideously. He wants to smile at the incongruity, because this is going to kill him, but it doesn’t even hurt.

His breath is coming in gasps, and though his eyes point to the ceiling, he doesn’t see it. Doesn’t see the decadent surroundings when he lays his head back, eyes moving to the wall behind them. Instead, he sees that door closing in his face, all those years back, with his mother and her new family on the other side of it. He said she’d slammed the door, but she hadn’t, not literally. Just a simple, easy _click_ of the latch, a finite moment, and all their lives changed.

The rejection then had been the birth of something, something too large, too raw to label simply as _pain_. It had grown into a seething ball of rage and betrayal and certainly, yes, pain, but so much more. His whole life had been spent in the search for his mother, for the one woman guaranteed to always love you, want you, support you—guarantee not guaranteed, in his case. Being a foster child had already opened wounds, tiny cuts throughout his psyche that he could never put his finger on but which he felt were bleeding harder every year. He’d worried eventually he’d bleed out from those cuts, and he wasn’t sure what would happen then. He thought finding his mother would heal those cuts, but he also hadn’t prepared for total rejection, hadn’t prepared in any way, and those cuts had sealed to scars, but something else had broken in him, completely broken apart, and all he has is that seething ball of rot and murder.

In this moment, eyes unfocused in the dim room, Roman allows himself the luxury of some beautiful _if_ s. If she hadn’t blamed him for his conception. If she hadn’t closed the door. If she’d put an arm around him and showed him inside. If the influence of a loving mother and a man like Neil Prescott had healed those cuts into something softer, something less destructive. If he’d spent the last four years of his life with them, especially with this woman kneeling beside him, this half-sister of his.

Sidney.

He looks at her now, meeting those wet brown eyes for a beat as she slowly releases her hold on the ice pick, leaning away from him. _Sidney, the victim_ , he’d called her. _Sidney, the survivor. Sidney, the STAR_. And she was all those things, those wondrous things, but maybe if they’d had the opportunity, they both could’ve been more.

He looks down at the ice pick sticking out from his chest and feels it with fingers going numb. The door breaks in to the right, and he hears the others enter, glances over in that direction—“Roman? It was Roman?”—but he can’t focus on them. Darkness is creeping in from the edges of his vision, darker than the room around them, and now his chest hurts, a radiating sort of pain like those cuts have broken open all in one place, longer and deeper than ever before.

He sees Sidney look back at him, and he lets her hang just for a moment before moving his gaze to her. A last defiance, though it feels empty. He’d accused her of stealing the life he should’ve had, but no. They are halves of the same whole. He’d been so proud when she’d shown her own bulletproof vest, as they did think alike. The slight furrow of her brow as she looks down at him is so familiar, as if he were looking in a mirror. Fighting with her had been like fighting with himself, every move perfectly choreographed, like they knew what the other was going to do before they did it.

_The other half of you_. That’s how he’d defined himself. Sidney, the heroine; Roman, the villain. You can’t have one without the other. They live for each other. More than that, though, he loves her. His little sister, this precious person whose life he’s shaped as much as she’s shaped his. Maybe he takes too much credit when he thinks he’s made her into the person she is today, but maybe not. She is a survivor because of him. Now he worries what will happen to her when he’s no longer here, her other half.

The pain is getting worse, and he barely feels when her hand slides into his. This acknowledgement is enough to jolt his waning strength, though, and he grips her hand, and she grips his even harder. She knows, says that crease between her brows, that soft tremble of her mouth. More than that, she _understands_.

_All I ever wanted to do was make a real, classic love story_ , he told Jennifer yesterday. Beyond the horror story his own life is, beyond the horror he’s instigated in Sidney’s life, he’s accomplished his goal—this is, at its heart, a love story. Not the love it could’ve been, thanks to their awful slut of a mother, but the love a damaged brother could have for his baby sister.

Roman holds his sister’s gaze for the last beat, then his head droops, his eyes roll back. Still gripping her hand tight to his chest, he dies.


End file.
